Thursday, November 15, 2007

In-Progress At Homestead: Truck Series Race

This is the final Truck Series race for SPEED, and they begin their afternoon and evening coverage with qualifying at 5PM Eastern Time.

Then, Krista Voda hosts the final edition of the pre-race show called The Set-Up at 7:30PM.

Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip host the race itself beginning at 8PM. Adam Alexander and Ray Dunlap will provide the reporting from pit road and also offer news in the Set-Up.

SPEED has been a consistent and strong partner for NASCAR, and the network hopes to go out on a high note with this championship deciding race.

NOTE: There will be a full column on the Truck Series race available for comments on Saturday morning. Please use this comments page until that time.

This page will host your comments about the coverage on SPEED. To add your opinion, please click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the instructions. Thank you once again for taking the time to add your opinion to The Daly Planet.

Yes Krista looks especially beautiful tonight her eyes are so pretty and sparkly. I like her doing these pre-race shows. Rick Allen's wrap up of the season show was pretty good too. Speed TV does a good job with the trucks.

No, we don't. Points are not awarded until after a race ends. The same thing happens in Cup all the time. Jeff Gordon has come into races the points leader and when the current projections had Johnson taking the points lead "as they ran", they just constantly referred to Jimmie Johnson as "points leader Jimmie Johnson" when by night's end he indeed remained 2nd in points and no points position change ever occurred.

I know they mean to say "the driver that would be the new points leader if they finish in these current positions". That's not the same as proclaiming "there's a new points leader" though.

Let's just hope Alexander, Dunlap, or Voda isn't too tough on Mike Skinner if they get the chance to interview him. It can't get much worse than this for the poor guy. I think the Speed guys are professional enough to not badger him with question after question ala Mike Massaro and ESPN with Dale Earnhardt Jr. after he missed the Chase at Richmond.

Yeah, I believe I recall Rusty Wallace and the other ESPN guys having a conversation about this very thing in the last week or two. When you have a vibration you should just change all 4 tires to be safe. It only costs you an extra 7-8 seconds to change all four tires, so it's not like changing all four costs you an extra lap on top of what you already lost.

I have no favorite among Skinner and Hornaday, but it's a shame to see a title possibly decided like that.

For once I can say that if someone (Bill Davis Racing) was watching ESPN, they would have learned something from that talk Rusty and the boys had and could very well still be in a position to the win the championship.

You're exactly right. All day long Speed as been a hype machine for their Speedweeks coverage in February. I didn't have a problem with it until tonight's interruption of live green flag truck racing. That was totally uncalled for.

actually it's 34 other trucks....but with Skinner having problem early on..I heard about other drivers...Shrub, jacque and that young driver that drove the RV across the country, heard about Benson, ;-)

Another SPEED glitch and camera goes black..only since ESPN took over has this happened...lol.

I had PLANNED on listening and watching SPEED all day long but we had a huge death of a radio broadcaster of 40 years here...local fella so i was glued to talk radio all day and kept up with qualifying online and had SPEED on mute. But good grief they are REALLY turning up the hype machine.

That was very disappointing though. Even tho I always get amused at that Sterling clip (pulling out his fender under the red flag, LOL) I could not believe SPEED did that.

Totally OUT of character for SPEED.

I was also suprised to hear Harvick is changing engines after doing so well this year!? Wonder what the reason is behind the change from RCR engines?

Well, lots of time left, wonder if SPEED is going to rack up the commercials....SURPRISE more SPEEDWEEKS hype. Course they will use the HD as reason to be over the top I s'pose.

I think SPEED suffers from the length of the race. When the race is under two hours and has few yellows, like tonight's, and you have this big championship battle and it involves problems for one of the drivers, it takes so much time to discuss and analyze what happened and what it means, it leaves little time to cover the race itself. But they did go back and talk about Wimmer, Marks, Sauter, Scott, and the rookie battle for both 07 and 08. I think they did as solid a job as they always do.

Hmm.... Speed leaves the air with 11 minutes of air time left in their broadcast window to switch to the last few minutes of an old Survival of the Fastest episode before Trackside starts at 10:30. What's up with that? Why not stick around and do a few more interviews instead of rushing off the air 11 minutes early?

Congrats to Grampa & Happy & DeLana ... It took them 6 years to get the truck team to the Championship ...

It would've been cute if Mike Helton had said something about how only a few years ago, they had parked Happy for being a bit aggressive and now he's a respectable owner ...

Speed really needs to keep Ray Dunlap ON the air ... He's got a kewl way of explaining the Craftsman tools so that everyone can understand ... When the other guys do the "tool tech" segment, it just doesn't feel right ...

Sophia - They said that two of the studs were broken on the wheel hub ... So, even IF Skinner's team had changed all 4 tires, there's NO guarantee that he would NOT have had the same problem ... There's several things that could've caused the studs to get broken, from too much torque being applied to the lug nuts to not enough torque to it being a factory defect in the hub/studs ...

Harvick had the misdiagnosis of tire problems at Charlotte ... Bowyer had it at another race ... But, sometimes changing all 4 tires still won't solve the problem ... There have been other teams who've had to replace the wheel hub because the studs broke or got stripped ...